Cutscenes That Were Cut From Vanquish

Making games is complicated and fine-tuning the pace of a game is more complicated still. During the fine-tuning process, you’re bound to come across content that you feel would ultimately get in the way of the experience.

For instance, here’s two cutscenes that PlatinumGames edited out of Vanquish. Commentary (minor spoilers) from Kunihiko Tsuda, in charge of the game’s cutscenes, follows each clip :

“We were originally going to use this cutscene after you fight the Argus for the first time. Since there were quite a few cutscenes in this part of the game, and this particular scene feels rather subdued, we determined it would slow down the game and did little to make the game feel alive, so we cut it.”

“This scene was originally going to play once you exit the tunnel in Act 1. However, once out of the tunnel, this movie was simply too long and moving it to gameplay was the best way to make the game feel alive… So we cut it.”

It feels terrible flushing someone’s hard work down the drain, but what must be done must be done. A moment of silence for these two brave cutscenes if you will.

I still say they should have kept the dog, but I have a feeling that it would have been in the way of the action.

Neckbear

I really don’t know how they actually were planning to make the dog useful. After all, all the space marines did nothing but get in the way (at least they crouched) and providing extra ammo after healing them. Or well, they could have found a way to get him in the game, but I really, after playing Vanquish, I can’t imagine the way being different (Well, excluding a few cutscenes that would have made awesome Missions.)

Testsubject909

Well, if he’s a robo dog… Imagine this. You have an ally who’s about 1/3 to 1/4th of the height of every other ally units around you, making sure not to get in the way of your headshots.

Now, that ally is robotic, and let’s assume, has a sort of adaptation of the ARS armor. Now, that robot can go zooming by on rockets and strike with vicious clawing and biting attacks wihch are his melee. He bounces off the targets whenever you start shooting towards them and thus keeps itself safe but is mainly useful for taking down the health of smaller enemies and distracting larger ones.

If they did that… The dog would’ve been freaking awesome.

Aara_Malik_Davoodi

I like their reasoning for cutting the scenes. They wanted to keep the game alive, keep it moving, keep it fast-paced. That seems to be the main theme of Vanquish, fast-paced, action-packed awesomeness.

On a sort of related note, I remember reading that towards the end of Other M, they were literally trimming seconds off of cutscenes in order to fit the capacity constraints of a DVD. I thought that was interesting

Testsubject909

There were too many of those. And far too much talking…

They need to understand. More is not better. It’s like a horror film, keep showing the grotesque mosnter that’s supposed to be lurking in the dark all the time and eventually… Well, it’s not going to be as interesting.

We have a visual And an interactive medium available here. There are better ways to convey both information and emotion then having Samus ramble.

And who’d honestly buy that DVD?

Aara_Malik_Davoodi

I’ll leave the rest of your post alone since I’m not going to throw oil on this fire, but by DVD I meant the DVD that the game is printed on. 360 and Wii games are printed on DVDs while PS3 games are printed on Blu-Rays, if I’m not mistaken

Neckbear

Wait…I’m quite sure I heard the same voice acting in-game, so they DID cut the cutscenes, but left the voice acting in-game, as well as the character interaction.

In other words, we didn’t really miss anything.

Testsubject909

One would argue, we gained something. There’s no need to interrupt the flow of gaming and also cut the flow of exposition. One can weave one into another, so, all the better for us, hmm?

gatotsu911

Honestly, I think this game is one of many that would be better off without any cutscenes whatsoever. Let the players guess what’s going on, if it really matters to them. They’ll almost certainly imagine a more interesting story than Vanquish has.

Testsubject909

They did good at taking these cutscenes down. Not that I didn’t enjoy them. I for one enjoyed hearing him say “Pissing in the wind”. Reminds me of a racist joke that made me laugh about my own people (I’m chinese so).

They exchanged exposition and a temporary slowdown that serves very little and which the player could discover themselves (Oh, this path is blocked. Guess I’ll turn… Left!) So yeah, good work Platinum.

Yusaku_Matsuda70s

Huh. Don’t think the cut scenes have anything significant going on.

The unfinished graphics kind of remind me how basic 3D games often looked on the PS1 and even Dreamcast, before the development of fancy shaders, dynamic lighting, and heavy post processing. Yet seeing visuals that look like that again makes me feel all fuzzy inside…

Aoshi00

Reminds me of those scenes rejected in Pixar movies too, and they were abandoned even as early as the storyboarding stages as not to waste money. I love the campy dialogue because the game was poking fun at itself :) argh.. need to get back to finish Vanquish, I’m at Ch4 the outer layer of the space colony now in the zero gravity zone, pretty cool.. Off to watch Toy Story 3 on blu-ray now :)..

Yusaku_Matsuda70s

Toy Story, what a trilogy. One of those rare times I thought each successive movie was better than the last. Now that you mention it I am reminded of the fake “outtakes” from Toy Story 2… Pixar just can’t make any real mistakes, can they?

We could always use more humor and charm in action games… You’re just replaying Vanquish right? I still haven’t found have any time right now to play anything outside of short bursts, so I’ve held off on buying games atm… :’(

Aoshi00

Yea, Pixar’s awesome, though I have to say other studios are also doing great animated movies like Dreamworks and such, like How to Train Your Dragon and MegaMind. My sis always thinks I’m a kid for liking that stuff, I’m just marveled by the CG it’s like they keep outdoing themselves every time and the stories are nice and heartwarming. Toy Story 3 was very touching.

Nah, I actually haven’t finished Vanquish yet, one night I just kept getting pawned by this robot so I needed a breather than I just got sidetracked ever since (it sucks they deduct 1000 points from your score for every death, makes you feel like a noob lol..). Man, they’re just have these crazy deals now, Amazon has a bunch of games for $50, get two of them and you get $30 credit, so it’s like 2 games for $70, $35 each for these recent releases like LoS, Vanquish, etc, check it out.

I pretty much got everything arldy, but I got Dragon Age Origin Ultmate along w/ Heavy Rain (I was upset when I found out my Jpn ver was censored, I know I’m crazy for double dipping on small things like that.. at least I could play it in Espanol or something lol..)

Yusaku_Matsuda70s

Toy Story 3 squeezed some tears out of me lol, riding my nostalgia train for the first movie, my own childhood, and the feelings I had when I went to college.

You’re right about those Amazon deals… ugh so hard to resist… guess I could get them now and put them in backlog mode until I have time…

Aoshi00

Nostalgic indeed, the crazy thing was the first one was 10+ yrs ago, so we all grew up just like Andy did.. I remember seeing the first Toy Story in the theater when I was a teenager, and it was like the first full blown CG animated movie back then so revolutionary..

Joanna

I hate when people do that. The whole cartoon = children show. There’s some great cartoons out there that can be enjoyed by anyone. Anime and games seem to invoke the same kind of reaction, although games seemingly less so nowadays.

I also find that children’s shows are very interesting from a social point of view. For example, I am intrigued by the show, “Fairly Odd Parents” because it reverses the child-parent dynamic. Most adult oriented shows have children portrayed as silly and dumb but lovable, here it’s reversed and the parents are portrayed that way. It’s almost as if society is saying child and parents cannot see eye to eye, which I find rather funny because I get along with my younger brother really well and there is a 12 year gap between us and I basically raised him. Ah, but I am going off topic now…

Aoshi00

Yea, my sis (she’s 6 yrs younger than me) just messes w/ me because I’m always eager to see the new CG animated films, from Pixar, Dreamworks, etc. They’re family movies for the most part, but still have some smart dialogue and heartwarming stories, plus I’m always impressed by the CG. I just saw MegaMind (Will Ferrell and Tina Fey) and loved it, and I plan to buy it on blu-ray later. I’m not really looking for any deeper meaning, I just tremendously enjoy them for the visuals and light heartedness. I plan to see “Tangled” (Rapunzel) from Disney later too. I don’t mind staying a kid at heart. I think we need more balance like that in this world :)

Joanna

Oh I hear you. I watch cartoons for enjoyment, but just sometimes I notice things that make me wonder. I regularly watch cartoons too. And I love animated movies too. I go to see them with my brother. :)

Haven’t seen MegaMind, but now I will look into it.

Zal_Yagun

If they were to add the robo dog, I would imagine it being working like the one in dead to rights, except it would have guns and thrusters, or if vanquish 2 allows vertical movement it would work as a mobile transforming jetpack dog that allows sam to fly around the battlefield with slightly better energy levels. in levels where he doesn’t need it, dead to rights dog

But honestly I do not understand about the situation with shinj mikami and platinum or tango studios.

http://honorless.net honorless

Oh, what? Nobody else is gonna call Ishaan out on that pun?

“Boo this man! Booooo!”

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

Hahahaha, hey I’d just gotten back from class and I was tired! Besides…we love our bad puns around here. :P

http://twitter.com/matty_125 matty

::throws hat and readily available cans::

Tokyo Guy

Vanquish is quite possibly my game of the year. It should be noted that I have a general disdain for this type of game, and yet the gameplay totally sold me on it.

My only complaint though; the game was criminally short. I’ve seen all kind of nonsense trying to justify the length or ways to artificially extend the playtime, but when push comes to shove Vanquish was like 1/3 of what it should have been.

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